Xenoi
by Spylace
Summary: They won the battle but not the war and Bumblebee can't help be drawn to the last living relic of their greatest enemy.


**Title:** Xenoi**  
>Summary: <strong>They won the battle but not the war and Bumblebee can't help be drawn to the last living relic of their greatest enemy.**  
>Rating:<strong> T**  
>Notes:<strong> Wow the summary sucks. When I first heard about TF4 due for 2014, the first thing that came to mind was Unicron and the revival of the entire Decepticon armada. But who knows. If it's better than TF09, I will omit it from my memories and pretend it's a trilogy with TF11 in the middle. **  
>Disclaimer:<strong> Do not own **  
>Warning:<strong> Character death, unbetaed, all mistakes are my own. And I assume, at this point, everyone has seen _Dark of the Moon_. **  
>Word count:<strong> 3400+

.

**Xenos** (pl. Xenoi): a concept that can roughly cover anything from 1. _enemy stranger_ 2. _ritual friend_

.

"What is your name?"

The mech thought and thought for a very long time, scars warping around the plates of his face as he stretched his jaws and opened them wide as to swallow them all whole. Instinctively, the soldiers flinched back at the flow of movement and raised arms, their entourage of Autobots doing very little to reassure them as the mech settled, the pale gleam of his optics fading as he picked at the spot on the wall in a practiced gesture. But Charlotte Mearing stood firm despite the screech of metal sliding on metal, tapping her foot impatiently as Starscream answered, "I don't know."

"Pardon my language but _bullshit_."

.

They didn't know why Starscream, along with them and a handful of others, hadn't been carried off by the pulse when the space bridge was destroyed. Perhaps the jetformer had spent too much time on Earth and Cybertron no longer recognized him as one of its own. The Autobots didn't like thinking about it. It struck too close to home how they were left behind to survive on an entirely organic planet, though plentiful in energon, left their tanks trifle too full and loaded with sludge. But when they found his body at the end of battle, during clean up and the collecting of dead, there had been a spark attached to the mech's headless torso, the fiery color of molten ore seeping through his armor. They should have killed him there and then, the last seeker, the last Decepticon.

And it was precisely that reason that stayed their hand. Starscream was more valuable alive than dead as damaged he was, his cranium eventually recast and rebuilt using processors from his once-soldiers. His amnesia was temporary and if his body did not reject the half-scrapped foreign material attached to it, the memories would return once his processors rerouted itself to the central databanks. For the moment, he remained calm and docile, mildly curious of his surroundings but ultimately bereft, not at all like an impatient ball of neurons that was a flier grounded, no more the terror of the skies than Bumblebee could fly.

Starscream sat in the corner, unaware or even unrepentant of the conflict that followed in his wake. He stared in myopia, his optics like the grainy windows that leaked sunlight from the rooftops. Ratchet hadn't been able to find adequate replacements for the intricate construct that was a seeker's optics. Unnerved, most avoided his unblinking and colorless gaze. But inexplicably they were drawn to the toneless song hummed beneath the weakened rattle of his engines, harsh and grating to their receivers but somehow soothing and familiar.

"A hatching song." Ratchet said once in a troubled voice. "I wonder..."

"How do we know he's not pretending?"

Ratchet passed him a sour look and Mirage subsided chagrined.

"Aren't you the one who's always yapping about information?"

"But what do we ask?"

"What can we ask?"

"Maybe we shouldn't." Brains said with feeling. "Sometimes there are things not worth knowing."

.

The Decepticon outpost, too long exposed to the elements, was bare and bone-dry. Had it not been for Leadfoot's keen eyes, they would have never noticed the dusty Energon distiller at its center, broken-down from disuse. The line of barrels beneath the tarps was already dry, tiny protoforms like an oily smear at the bottom of the barrel. Starscream, perhaps not sensing this, whistled, his vocals unable to produce the customary clicks of a caretaker calling his charges home.

Bumblebee knew the story from before, back on Cybertron, of a down-on-his-luck flier promoted to the second highest seat in all of Cybertronian army. Shunned for his intimidating seeker frame, Starscream had been relegated to the task of a caretaker who wasn't even allowed to touch the younglings under his care. His sole duty had been to watch from afar, protect them with his life when necessary.

He shook his head, trying to clear his processors when suddenly, out of the dust, answering clicks came, the diminutive drumming of spindly, plasmafly-legs across the rusted metal. Immediately, Starscream stalked forward, his long strides bridging the gap between him and the hatchling. Several soldiers shouted in alarm and the Wreckers belatedly moved as though to intercept him. But the seeker ignored them, knocking over several containers and revealing the contents of one, two, four, six as he scooped out the tiny corpses with his claws.

When found, the hatchling shrunk back with a shrill cry, its flexible, translucent armor corroded and mostly eaten away. Bumblebee took a moment to settle his tanks at the tangle of exposed wires, protoform-grey but stained with rot. Even Sideswipe looked mildly ill as he sheathed his sabers. Ratchet pushed them both out of his way, his optics flickering green as he scanned the shivering wreck. "Let me see it."

The hatchling howled, cowering before the ones whose presence it should have welcomed. Almost dreamily, Starscream presented it, the sunlight sending muted ripples down his long servos. Hushed murmurs spread through the crowd. The hatchling was roughly the size of a human youngling and in its helplessness; the soldiers couldn't help but repeat doubts of its survival. It didn't encourage them that the Autobots stood still with grim looks on their alien faces as the medic shared his diagnosis.

"Slag." Ratchet stroked the hatchling's helm with one finger, cleaning the sticky gunk off its malformed vents. "I can't do anything for him here. We need to take him back—Starscream!"

The seeker straightened himself, easily out of everyone's reach as he observed the hatchling weaving on his palms like an overcharged frizz-rat. "Please." Ratchet whispered gently. "Give him to me."

With his thrusters disabled, there was no chance of Starscream flying off with the hatchling damaged as it was. But it didn't stop the chorus of safeties being clicked off, Mirage barely biting back an annoyed order for them to stand down. They were all solely focused on Starscream with the hatchling in his claws, looking at them all in sardonic amusement.

"No"

The hatchling never had the chance to cry out.

.

Bumblebee cowered in the hanger as Optimus and Ratchet argued loudly, their English oscillating between High Iacon and Standard Praxian. The object of their quarrel crouched in the corner, staring off into space. Sideswipe shot the flier a look of deep suspicion as Mirage played the reluctant mediator between their Prime and their medic.

"Then ask him!" Ratchet exploded, throwing up his servos in frustration. At the sudden switch in language, the researchers working with them blinked, slightly taken aback. Lennox and his team quickly made their way over, trying to glean information from the nearest person. "Ask him _why_ he killed the hatchling!"

The humans didn't think there was anything wrong. The killing of the hatchling was tragic but they simply thought it an act of a mech gone mad. Bumblebee, the youngest of them all since Skid and Mudflap's deaths was inclined to think the same. But the other Autobots, well-versed in Cybertronian culture or what little was left to them, didn't treat Starscream like a mad-bot. In fact, Ratchet's ministration had become gentle, downright kind compared to what the Autobots were subjected to daily. He seemed to be torn between throttling the mech for answers and alternatively, squirrel him away down a ravine like a turbofox did its cubs.

Bumblebee wanted to know why.

"You're afraid." Starscream verbalized at his approach, more interested in the hole in the wall that he picked at with diligence to the despair of the maintenance workers who worked the floor. All attempts at patching it had been thwarted by his claws. Once, Bumblebee had been afraid of them, of what they could do, of how they could hurt.

Once, there had been a hatchling cradled between them before being snuffed out like a lilleth egg dropped out of its nest.

"Yes"

"Why should you? You are a warrior grown, you have little to fear from the likes of me." The flier said all this in a nonchalant tone. However his optics were unusually sharp in the pit of the shadows, not a mad-bot's, but like that of a predatory pneuma-lion before an ambush. He moved, joins creaking and alerting the soldiers on duty. Static spread across the floor but Starscream only shifted his position as if to spite them, nibbling on the offering of scrap metal and spreading his wings as far as it was allowed, very far, creating a semblance of privacy in their folds.

"Little Autobot" Starscream crooned, hypnotizing him with his colorless optics. "You are far from your friends tonight."

"I need to know something." Bumblebee said with a touch of desperation, lapsing into a Simfur dialect from his youngling days. "The hatchling. Why? We wouldn't have hurt it."

Starscream laughed openly and without mirth. "Oh how little you know." He mocked and in the darkness, he loomed like an astro-eagle, ready to make its kill. "The Autobots aren't upset because I killed the hatchling. They are, but not in the way you think." Bumblebee let out an embarrassing squeak when he felt a claw touch the side of his helm, down the slit-shaped vents and tickling his vocals. "They couldn't care less that the hatchling is dead. At worst, it's just another Decepticon."

"That's horrible." Bumblebee managed. "But then why is everyone upset?"

The seeker retracted his wings, stretching just to make the guards jump. He settled down in his corner, his optics sharp like a plasma blade slipping beneath the armor even though his body betrayed his exhaustion and screamed it out for the world to hear—if they cared to.

"Because now they know, something is coming."

.

The next day, Mearing berated them all for keeping secrets to which Topspin retorted hotly that maybe they should bother learning Cybertronian since the Autobots were considerate enough to use Earth's languages. The atmosphere became charged and Bumblebee longed for Sam who wouldn't have understood the ramifications but wouldn't have tried because he accepted that there were things that didn't transcent intergalactic barriers and this was one of them, infanticide in the face of mutual destruction. The humans asked questions and took notes, paying rapt attention as Optimus quietly coaxed the answers out of the sleepy seeker.

"Why did you kill the hatchling?"

"Mercy"

Starscream's eyes were hollow, almost transparent. Like he had one too many tainted cubes and was on the verge of purging his tanks. Even his cooling units struggled to vent heat causing the Wreckers to collectively wince at the continued sighs and wheezes.

"The hatchling was innocent. We would have protected it."

"You?" Starscream stretched his legs towards the spot of sunlight at his pedes. He tilted his helm back, the dull metal clanging against the wall. "How?"

"I meant it when I gave you my word. Though you are our prisoner—"

"Your words mean nothing to me." The flier snapped and paused, optics spinning into harrowing focus, dim and colorless. "He who was named after the herald is his heir. Perhaps you can live without your brother but he will never be finished with you."

"That's enough." Ratchet said finally, shooing everyone away but the Wreckers who were roped into pushing Starscream down into a more manageable position. The mech protested, subsiding into a weary grumble when Ratchet struck smartly at his kneecaps with a wrench. Optimus exchanged a curt nod with the medic, taking it as his cue to leave. "We are done here."

.

There came a time when Starscream stopped moving though his mind remained razor-sharp like the teeth of a subterranean driller. When prodded, he replied tiredly, "I miss the sun."

Ratchet explained, "The Earth's atmosphere protects the humans from cosmic radiation. Unfortunately, Seekers require more than the usual fare of sunlight to remain functioning."

They couldn't simply let Starscream loose outside, even for a little walk. But as time passed, it was obvious that the newly installed UV lamps were doing more harm than good. Olive-grey color-nanites scattered every time he so much as breathed. Sideswipe had been convinced that the process was contagious and refused to approach the base within three klicks.

Bumblebee had taken Starscream-watching three shifts in a row when the flier stood up and moved to the center of the floor, dying nanites following him like a vapor trail.

"Starscream?"

The mech assumed his alternate form, dead to the world except for a single—'_I shall rest for a bit._ _Yes_."

.

A quartex later, a loud hum alerted everyone to Starscream's awakening. As expected, there was clamor once the flier reassumed his bipedal form. But that was not what caught their attention as his canopy slid shut with a silent hiss. Ratchet slapped a hand across his optics while Sideswipe whistled in appreciation, spinning around to get a better look, forgetting his initial fear of the other mech. The Wreckers gaped at the sight, talking excited amongst themselves at the radically different form Starscream had assumed.

The seeker preened, stretching out his stiff wings which were flared downwards than up like before. During his sleep, color-nanites had resettled across his armor, casting a pale-white tint over the steely metal. Runes spilled down his exoskeleton, visible at an angle and invisible the rest. Someone was shouting furiously from the phone Major Lennox held, far away from his ear.

Prime asked dryly, "I assume you are alright then."

Starscream smiled.

"Naturally."

.

"Fear not, I will stay until it is time." Starscream assured Ratchet as the medic carefully went over his thrusters to ensure they were in working order. There were no new weapons detected which was what NEST really wanted to hear. And if Ratchet found a second layer of armor beneath the white-washed first, flexible and pliant, waiting to be transmuted into a new form, that was for Prime's audials and his alone.

"Time for what?" Ratchet asked irritably as he craned his helm back, his backstrut creaking in protest.

"The end"

"You're not normally so cryptic."

"And you are being intentionally dull."

Starscream's optics were still clear—why was that?—though no longer grainy as though someone had carved out the wings of a Cybertronian butterfly to make them. He continued to stare in disconcertion if anyone moved too fast, like Wheelie and Brains playing tag and getting underpede, muttering to his human guards that he might squish them if they didn't keep away.

"What have you got to lose?"

"Everything."

.

"He should be tried for his crimes, not coddled and racking up millions of dollars' worth of fuel!"

"I believe you have a strict rule regarding prisoners of war?"

"Just what aren't you telling us?"

"He has been making disturbing claims." Optimus admitted resignedly, looking as though he wouldn't mind a quartex's worth of stasis lock either.

Charlotte Mearing crossed her arms. "I'm sorry, would you like some cheese with that?" When no reply was forthcoming she shouted, "Come on people! Where is the valuable Intel you promised us?"

"It may not seem valuable to you..." Topspin bristled.

"If you'd just analyze the various frequencies and sequences..." Mirage interjected.

"Starscream warned us of danger that is coming."

"From what you've told us, Starscream's lied and cheated up the Decepticon ladder."

"You forget," Mirage said in mild protest, "Decepticons weren't always Decepticons just like Autobots weren't always Autobots. Starscream's position is well-earned, he has waged entire campaigns on his wings alone. He isn't lying, I am sure of this. "

"Then what is this danger?"

The Autobots all looked at each other.

Optimus sighed. "Long ago..."

.

"I think they may be waiting."

"For what?" Sideswipe asked, slashing the air with his sabers. "Just let me at them."

"No time." Starscream interrupted suddenly. "Come." He twisted and collapsed his body into its jet-shaped alternate form, clean and streamlined in a way it hadn't been since Cybertron. Ancient glyphs stood out in stark relief against the watery white paint. Bumblebee couldn't help but reach out and touch as the Wreckers protested in unison. "Absolutely not."

'_By the time the fleshlings have charged their machines, it will be too late._'

'_Do not fear._' He commed, a healthy dose of amusement evident in his words. '_I will not drop you. And it'd be a shame if I cannot test my new wings._'

"Can I come?" Bumblebee blurted out, aware of the shocked and stunned optics surrounding him. Without a helm, without a face, the tilt of his mandibles never closing just right and the hollowness of his optics, it was difficult to see what Starscream might have thought at his request. But the seeker blinked from white to red, the color poisoning the light at the edge of his wings.

'_Yes_'

.

The Decepticon army stood like a stretch of shadow across the desert, the world's entire supply of ammunition focused on them with trembling fingers poised over every button. But as Mirage had said, they seem to be waiting for something. They did not move.

Starscream flew past them overhead, Optimus Prime tied to his undercarriage and the rest of the Autobots crammed inside his trailer. The mech thought he might have heard the flier say something but dismissed it as the wind and scanned the mechs below. He could identify familiar faces, all those he faced in the past, all whom that he thought were lost forever.

Bumblebee whirled in distress when he detected Megatron at the front of the lines, optics barely flickering at their appearance. Starscream landed near the American army, quickly detaching from the Prime as though he was contagious. Snorting, Optimus lifted the latch to his trailer, watching his friends and soldiers spill out the back. There was a quick scuffle as the Wreckers tangled with Sideswipe, who upon finding his thighs scuffed, let out a screech of utter horror.

But still the Decepticon army did not move and it filled Bumblebee with a quiet sort of dread.

"What's wrong with them?"

"They're dead." Starscream replied cheerily, even past Ratchet's quick jab at his side. "Scan them if you wish, not a hint of ember lies in their spark chambers."

"It's true." Leadfoot confirmed. "One dead armada present and accounted for."

"But... how?"

"You don't really seem surprised big guy." Lennox said uneasily as he relayed the info to everyone else.

"There are ways... a mech can be brought back to life."

"I didn't think there was enough of the All Spark left to do... that."

"It's not the All Spark." Bumblebee murmured.

Up ahead, a storm cloud was forming, a massive thunderhead obscuring the sky. Jets cleared out of the space with panicked reports of unearthly sounds and images within the dark. And the very earth seemed to shudder as the blackness blanketed them in obscurity, cutting them away from outside contact as their radios and communication devices fizzled and died.

"Starscream, what have you done?" Ratchet asked, his arm saws spinning at the ready.

"I have done nothing." Starscream denied, "It is you who have doomed us all."

"And you knew about this, all along."

"Yes."

The seeker's face softened, a single claw skittering down the edge of his helm and his doorwings like he was looking at a hatchling rather than a mech full grown. His optics sharpened, retracted like something made as an afterthought, a look of intense concentration passing over the line of his body as Ratchet roared at them all to hold him down. Starscream pulled away and Bumblebee nearly cried out at the loss of contact, the dim glow of his tail lights the only things visible in the sudden dust storm.

"Wait!" Optimus tried to grab hold of him, tried to stay him and ended up with a servo-full of Bumblebee instead. "Help us stop this!"

"You've already killed one god Prime! What's another?"

"Starscream!"

.

Starscream landed before the Decepticon army in a standing bow, swiftly scanning the forms of Soundwave, Shockwave, Blackout, and the rest, everyone who had been on Cybertron, everyone off of it who had died a loser's death at the hand of the Autobots. Now they were back at the courtesy of a legend made real. The mechs held no sparks, they were mere shadows, shades, like a glitch in the programming unable to terminate. Starscream yearned, he wished to live. But better dead now than later at the world's end.

"My lord." He purred, kneeling with his talons thumping his golden canopy in an abbreviated salute.

Megatron cocked his head, something like _life_ entering his empty optics.

And with a sweeping backhand, tore the head off his once faithful lieutenant.


End file.
